148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers lost service in storm's wake.

Tropical Storm Harvey has disrupted at least 17 emergency call centers and 320 cellular sites, and it has caused outages for more than 148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers.

The numbers come from the Federal Communications Commission, which activated its Disaster Information Reporting System to track Harvey's impact on communications services. Communications providers are being asked to submit outage information each morning, and the FCC is publishing a daily summary.

In 55 Texas and Louisiana counties that are part of the disaster area, 320 out of 7,804 cell sites were down as of yesterday at 11am EDT, according to the FCC's latest summary published yesterday. That's 4.1 percent across the area, but in a few Texas counties the cell blackouts affected more than 80 percent of cell sites.

The cell site outage percentages were 94.7 percent in Aransas County (18 out of 19 sites down); 85.2 percent in Calhoun (23 out of 27); 84.6 percent in Refugio (22 out of 26); and 51.7 percent in San Patricio (30 out of 58).

"Those counties were subject to mandatory evacuation orders, so it was unclear how many people are affected by the outages," The Wall Street Journalreported. "It was also unclear which carriers stayed online and which went down, because carriers aren’t required to disclose the information publicly."

All 320 disrupted cell sites were in Texas, as every Louisiana cell site remained intact.

While cell towers generally have backup batteries and generators, "they can still go down if they get flooded or if equipment gets blown off the tower, carriers say," the Journal wrote. Carriers were working to get towers back up and running and are offering free services to customers in the storm's path.

911 outages increase

Of the affected 911 call centers, 16 were in Texas and one was in Louisiana. The 911 problem increased quite a bit from Saturday to Sunday, going from nine to 17 affected Public Safety Answering Points.

When it comes to cable systems and other wireline providers, "there are at least 148,565 subscribers out of service in the affected area," the FCC said. This was down from 149,909 the previous day.

Comcast said that most of its outages are due to power failures. The company has suspended operations in the Houston area until "local emergency management agencies deem it safe to be on the roads," Multichannel News wrote.

There were nine radio stations out of service yesterday, but no TV stations went down.

911 call centers are struggling with call volume even in cases when they're up and running. Space City Weather (operated by Ars Technica's own Eric Berger) reports:

According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, the city’s 911 system is being overwhelmed with calls on Sunday, many of which are not life threatening. “Please, let’s give preference to life threatening calls,” he said. Those include vehicles trapped in rising waters (the majority of deaths during flood events like this come in vehicles), and people in homes where water is rapidly rising.

Three Ars writers and editors in Houston remain dry and well.

UPDATE: The FCC posted another status report this afternoon. The number of cell site outages grew from 320 yesterday to 364 today. Cable and wireline outages surged, with at least 189,487 subscribers out of service, up from 148,565 yesterday.

There are now 16 emergency call centers (down from 17 yesterday) affected by the storm. Six call centers regained service, but five new ones were disrupted.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

On the one hand, I want to say "this is why copper lines matter." OTOH, that's clearly not where the future is. Is there a good way to increase disaster resilience of these towers?

Certainly they can be made more robust. The question becomes how much to you invest and where? This is a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the specfics of what caused most outages. Even a cell tower that is working is no good if not connected to the system. And copper lines are down too....

Fortunately they have mobile units to deploy, which may be the right approach in general.

I was following Harvey on the Wunderground blog as it developed. It was like a car crash, but not a slow-motion one.

At the moment there is a limb of dry air reaching into the spiral, but it's unsure whether it will be enough to choke it off. We have to watch as the center moves out to sea again, but last maps I saw the center was looking pretty good (as in pretty bad).

It is throwing off a massive fan of water to the north east. Meanwhile the surge is still blocking run-off. You have some important ship channels and massive amounts of chemicals at risk, it remains to be seen what happens.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

Overall it would appear cellular networks handled the storm decently well. The counties with major outages are the ones that took the category 4 storm head on. And based on the fact that we saw streams and photos from the area it'd appear many of those didn't fail at the moment of impact - I doubt much other infrastructure is running right now there either.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

The other big change is that traditional POTS is rare today. Most people use a cellphone backed up by VOIP from the ISP. So you're relying on being able to provide your own power rather than the phone having power provided by the provider like with POTS over copper.

It might be good policy to figure out how to harden cell tower locations against predictable disasters (floods in flood-prone areas, for instance), and to best use the available network resources in times of disasters.

This hardening might include elevation, flood walls, onsite backup power, etc. You might not need to harden all cells in an area, but a careful selection could maximize network availability while containing costs.

To make best use of available network resources during a disaster, network operators might be able to control demand with traffic shaping: limiting high-bandwidth video streams and optimizing support for text messaging, for instance.

We'd need some public policy to drive this investment: new requirements on network operators, or public funding, perhaps. But this seems imminently possible, particularly if sold in terms of disaster planning, public safety and security. In other words, as protection against terror attacks as well as natural disasters.

I came here to comment on something similar. I'm not sure what the journalism style guide would say, but here in Florida, if a storm reaches hurricane status we refer to the damage as from a hurricane - even if it's after it's transitioned to a tropic storm. Only once a storm is no longer named do we refer to it as "remnant" of hurricane name.

You see, it's a very big deal if a storm makes it to hurricane status. If it does, the hurricane clauses in insurance contracts kick in - even if you're only damaged from the remnants. If it doesn't reach hurricane status at any point then normal deductibles and coverage rules apply.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

The other big change is that traditional POTS is rare today. Most people use a cellphone backed up by VOIP from the ISP. So you're relying on being able to provide your own power rather than the phone having power provided by the provider like with POTS over copper.

In my case, the local cable nodes go down when the grid goes down. So even if you have back-up power for your router and ATA, your VOIP line is useless.

Claiming a hurricane is proof of climate change is just as fallacious as claiming a blizzard is proof against it.

Claiming climate change should make storms more destructive isn't fallacious. And the big costs come from the big storms; a little bit more water can cost a lot more money when it's the little bit over the top of the riverbank.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

The other big change is that traditional POTS is rare today. Most people use a cellphone backed up by VOIP from the ISP. So you're relying on being able to provide your own power rather than the phone having power provided by the provider like with POTS over copper.

In my case, the local cable nodes go down when the grid goes down. So even if you have back-up power for your router and ATA, your VOIP line is useless.

Time to study Morse code and get a battery-powered ham radio and license?

"Journalistic ethics have long tabooed rushing to judgement about the cause of this tornado or that flash flood. But now, with mathematical rigor and clarity, scientists in the field of “extreme weather attribution” can make such connections in some cases.

Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central, believes the media are failing to contextualize current weather coverage -- similar to misleading reporting leading up to the financial crisis. She speaks with Bob about how journalists can embrace this form of science and more precise language to better explain global warming’s role in extreme weather events."

On the one hand, I want to say "this is why copper lines matter." OTOH, that's clearly not where the future is. Is there a good way to increase disaster resilience of these towers?

The future is whatever we decide the future is. If we're moving away from copper, the cooper needs to actually be replaced with a next-gen upgrade. Likely fiber. The crime is in letting coms companies take massive government subsidies and grants ostensibly to wire the nation ... and then having them slap up some measly cell towers, not lay *any* physical wiring at all, and just pocketing all the cash. At this point, they are growing fat while leaving us with diddly/squat to show for a once robust national infrastructure. A hell of a future, that.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

110mph winds are guaranteed to fuck up just about anything, including wires and the network buildings that they require to operate. Wireless-only infrastructure is lazy bullshit proposed by cheap MBA shitheads, but in this situation it really did not matter what kind of comms network you're on.

It might be good policy to figure out how to harden cell tower locations against predictable disasters (floods in flood-prone areas, for instance), and to best use the available network resources in times of disasters.

This hardening might include elevation, flood walls, onsite backup power, etc. You might not need to harden all cells in an area, but a careful selection could maximize network availability while containing costs.

To make best use of available network resources during a disaster, network operators might be able to control demand with traffic shaping: limiting high-bandwidth video streams and optimizing support for text messaging, for instance.

We'd need some public policy to drive this investment: new requirements on network operators, or public funding, perhaps. But this seems imminently possible, particularly if sold in terms of disaster planning, public safety and security. In other words, as protection against terror attacks as well as natural disasters.

it comes down to cost/benefit as everything does. With a highly centralized system like a TV station it makes sense to overbuild and over-backup. You only have one revenue source, so you guard it. In a distributed system like a modern communications system there's a diminishing return on hardening power systems. What that number is depends on what the bean counters are willing to release, and much of that is more perception than reality. In the case of a cable system, they were always powered in a decentralized manor only because it was impossible to keep voltages high enough to power amplifiers over more than a few blocks' distance. And usually if theres a widespread disaster the power is out and no one's TV was working anyway. So that meant going cheap on power, although with the rise of VoIP systems and Internet service cable has improved their power systems. Cell towers are somewhere in-between a TV station and a cable system, so they're likely to have batteries and an onsite generator but not necessarily have enough fuel for more than a few hours run time. Radio stations may or may not have a decent power redundancy plan, but I'll bet many of them aren't as good as they used to be. Passive optical networks avoid the power issue, but the CPE will still need power and in the case of wind damage and physical impacts to infrastructure there's still going to be cut cables and the like.

Cable power supplies have batteries but usually only have generator inputs, meaning a tech has to run one out to the PSU and chain it to the pole, then usually watch to see when the batteries are recharged and run it out to another. This works ok but is very labor intensive and of course if the roads are closed forget about it. Not to mention enterprising people with sawzalls. Phone plants are about the same although they're gong to have bigger battery banks and key points in the network will have standby generators in the cabinets. Central offices and cable headends are designed with generators in mind and even have a 3rd input on the transfer switches for large portable units but rarely are built to be submersible. A few years ago there was extensive flooding in the Boulder Colorado area. We had a hub that got flooded yet somehow stayed up the whole time. Instead of rebuilding it we made it a "passive" hub, converting it to all fiber optical patch panels and mux/demuxes. Sure if the building washes away it will cause an outage, but power (the most common cause of outages) isn't an issue anymore.

But in this case I'm sure many of the cell tower generators are full of water. It's pretty hard to justify 20 foot tall intake and exhaust lines on a backup generator and 15 feet of water is going to put a lot of pressure on fuel tanks.

Houston's 911 services could have helped themselves had the mayor not played chicken with evacuating.

Look at the Rita evacuation. The roads that people would have been stuck on when the rain arrived were completely inundated. It would have been a disaster. And if you evacuated toward San Antonio you got flooded and if you headed to NO/La you are going to get flooded today.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

The other big change is that traditional POTS is rare today. Most people use a cellphone backed up by VOIP from the ISP. So you're relying on being able to provide your own power rather than the phone having power provided by the provider like with POTS over copper.

In my case, the local cable nodes go down when the grid goes down. So even if you have back-up power for your router and ATA, your VOIP line is useless.

Time to study Morse code and get a battery-powered ham radio and license?

There's no Morse code requirement in the US anymore. Even easier to get licensed.

One large problem with the 911 calls is that people are calling and then hang up when they get a busy signal. As the Emergency Management Services keeps repeating to all news outlets, stay on line because the calls will be answered and you are put in a cue. Realize a few things:

- Over 58,000 911 calls being handled but that is probably less than 25% of people trying to call.- The 911 operators have to determine if it is a life threatening emergency or not. Unfortunately, people call with maybe 1 ft of water in residence but this is not life threatening. - A rescue takes at least 1 hr to set up and go in to get someone, so you want to make sure of the problem before committing to a specific rescue. People who are in immediate life or death situations may be bypassed without this procedure.- Unfortunately, there are still idiots trying to drive around when (Saturday and SUnday) all major roads were flooded. We had over 175 major flooded (4+ ft of water) sections on major interstates and tollways alone. This doesn't include any other street flooding. Even high water rescue vehicles had to be abandoned in some instants. Most of the deaths will probably be associated with car flooding.

Fortunately I didn't get flooded in my neighborhood but I was very lucky.

Houston's 911 services could have helped themselves had the mayor not played chicken with evacuating.

It wasn't possible to have a mandatory evacuation in that time. People are better off in their homes than on the road mostly. However, I'm not sure people in the worst zones got the message that this was going to be a massive event and they might have to survive alone for days with nothing.

Claiming a hurricane is proof of climate change is just as fallacious as claiming a blizzard is proof against it.

Claiming climate change should make storms more destructive isn't fallacious. And the big costs come from the big storms; a little bit more water can cost a lot more money when it's the little bit over the top of the riverbank.

But claiming that this storm is a result of climate change is fallacious. You can't claim that a single event is due to climate change (hurricanes happen, and they happened long before we got here). Your argument has to be statistical - whether or not we're seeing a change in the probability of storms like this. Are storms like this more likely to form now than they were 50 years ago? Are the storms that do form now more powerful on average than they were 50 years ago?

It's like claiming that a coin is fair on the basis of a single toss. You can't do that. You can only make that claim on the basis of many tosses.

Harvey may be representative of a new climate normal, or it may just be a freak event that's not related to the overall warming trend. We can't say one way or the other on the basis of one storm.

What would be interesting is to compare this to how many copper lines went down in the same areas. With the big battle over carriers switching to wireless for everything, and people wanting to keep copper, this could be an excellent modern data point.

You would need to look back in history to see previous storms, with similar flooding\wind issues, and see how the maintained copper network did. Today, they don't really maintain the copper, so a fair comparison won't work.

My understanding of past storms, is the phone lines would stay up, if the wind didn't take down the wires, and would work even under water...

The other big change is that traditional POTS is rare today. Most people use a cellphone backed up by VOIP from the ISP. So you're relying on being able to provide your own power rather than the phone having power provided by the provider like with POTS over copper.

In my case, the local cable nodes go down when the grid goes down. So even if you have back-up power for your router and ATA, your VOIP line is useless.

Time to study Morse code and get a battery-powered ham radio and license?

There's no Morse code requirement in the US anymore. Even easier to get licensed.

Oh hell, I didn't even know that used to be a requirement. I chose Morse for added tongue-in-cheek value.

Communication during natural disasters is key, yet (surprise!) the wireless folks have blocked default activation of FM reception by phones (here). Effectively a free safety tool but turned off at request of folks that sell data.

Claiming a hurricane is proof of climate change is just as fallacious as claiming a blizzard is proof against it.

Claiming climate change should make storms more destructive isn't fallacious. And the big costs come from the big storms; a little bit more water can cost a lot more money when it's the little bit over the top of the riverbank.

But claiming that this storm is a result of climate change is fallacious. You can't claim that a single event is due to climate change (hurricanes happen, and they happened long before we got here). Your argument has to be statistical - whether or not we're seeing a change in the probability of storms like this. Are storms like this more likely to form now than they were 50 years ago? Are the storms that do form now more powerful on average than they were 50 years ago?

It's like claiming that a coin is fair on the basis of a single toss. You can't do that. You can only make that claim on the basis of many tosses.

Harvey may be representative of a new climate normal, or it may just be a freak event that's not related to the overall warming trend. We can't say one way or the other on the basis of one storm.

All the OP claimed (sarcastically) was that climate change exists and causing damage. Climate change is the result, global warming is the cause. Climate change effects are general long term effects, not individual weather systems. For a weather phenomenon, all you can do is model it a bunch of times and see if the climate change effect is manifesting, but this is kind of abstract.